“It was an unbelievable race. We had a great strategy and we had been working a lot on the car set up and we were able to double stint the tires since the beginning of the race – especially during the night – and we were making up a lot of ground. We just pushed the tires to the end. 24 hours is a long race and it puts a lot of stress on the tires when you have to push hard to make up positions or get ahead of somebody with the strategy. Continental has done a tremendous job in supporting the series for so many years.”

"Overall the Whelen Cadillac was strong. We ran great and the guys really did a great job with pit stops, the whole Action Express group. We were there. We were at the top of the list and every one of us got a chance to lead for a while but just small little issues. For example at one point I was leading and the brake light went out so we had to come in, fix the brake light, and lost a lap. We had some potential overheating issues so we had to come in and that took three or four laps to figure out. Overall, for Action Express, it was unbelievable. A one, two finish for Cadillac. It's the best finish I've ever had here.

"At one point, when Filipe (Nasr, co-driver) was in the car, we did have a cut in the tire in the rear. I don't know exactly what happened there. We did have a number of double stints on the Continental's and kept pushing all race long. The nice thing about double stinting is the tires are warm and they carry over to the next stint. Especially when you're changing drivers. We could do two stints on the tires, no problem. The track was pretty slippery and greasy though. The track was also really dirty off-line. It wasn't so bad if you could stay in the groove but when you're passing GT cars and that's where you get off and there was so much debris, broken body parts, and just stuff everywhere, and you just had to stay out of the junk and you were okay. For my stint I had a good run the whole way through. The Continental tires held up great in all the runs I had. I double stinted and I tried scuffs, stickers, I tried it all and overall had a great run!"

"We had no issues to speak of. All my guys, my co-drivers, did a really great job! That's as quick as our car would go and at the end obviously the two Cadillac Action cars were having some trouble so we thought there was a chance to capitalize but I think they were just slowing down as much as they needed to, to win the race. All-in-all it's a great day to finish third in this ORECA. We really had great luck with the Continental tires and double and triple stinted with no trouble. We triple stinted at different times throughout the day just depending on what we were working with. It was great!"

Trent Hindman, No. 86 Michael Shank Racing Acura NSX GT3(finished P2 in GTD)
(on rain during the night) “It was a little bit of a tricky situation because it looked like a small shower coming through and we thought maybe we could go out on dry tires and get away with it and just kind of hold out, but then it all dumped down at once. It was over pretty quick, but if was enough rain to where if you didn’t go to wet tires you weren’t going to have a great race. Lucky enough Michael Shank Racing made the right call and put us on the Continental rain tires which were great and we just managed for the rest of the race. Track conditions were really difficult to handle, but we had a good set up to be able to counter that and work with what we had there. A big thank you to the Michael Shank Racing guys for giving me a great Acura NSX GT3. The Continental tires were really hooked up there.”

“Today was a good day - it was a long 24 hours and the Continental tires held up well in a lot of different conditions. We went from fairly hot and humid conditions to slicks in rain, and rains in rain and cold throughout the night. It’s pretty impressive how the same tire can function in all conditions and still go quick. For us, it was a hard fought day – you hate to stand on the podium at Daytona in third but it’s worse to be off the podium. It’s a good points for the rest of the season.

NEXT UP

The WeatherTech SportsCar Championship travels to Sebring International Raceway March 14-17, 2018 for the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.